Quotes from Who Will Tell the People

Who Will Tell the People, The Betrayal of American
Democracy, by William Greider, examines contemporary
U.S. politics with a critical eye. The short quotations are
intended to give a flavor of Mr. Greider’s observations.

The practical result is a lawless government — a reality
no one in power wishes to face squarely since all are
implicated, on way or another. The clear standards that
citizens expect from law — firm definitions of right and
wrong, commandments of thou shalt or thou shalt not — are
corrupted by a fog of tentative declarations of intent. The
classical sense of law is lost in sliding scales of targets and
goals, acceptable tolerances and negotiated exceptions,
discretionary enforcement and discretionary compliance.

Chapter 4, “The Grand Bazaar”

Bush’s office and OMB became a shadowy court
of appeals where Republican business constituencies could win
swift redress — without attracting public attention or
leaving any record of what had transpired. In most instances,
the corporations had already lost the argument somewhere else,
in Congress or during the long public rule-making process or in
lawsuits. Vice-President Bush privately turned them into
winners.

Chapter 6, “The Fixers”

The Democratic party, as a political organization, is no longer
quite real itself. The various strands of personal
communication and loyalty that once made it representative and
responsive to the people are gone. It exists as a historical
artifact, an organizational fiction.

Chapter 11, “Who Owns the Democrats?”

The Democrats might more accurately described now as “the
party of Washington lawyers” — lawyers who serve as
the connective tissue within the party’s upper reaches. The are
the party establishment, to the extent that anyone is, that has
replaced the old networks of state and local political bosses.
But these lawyers have no constituencies of their own and,
indeed, must answer to no one, other than their clients.

Chapter 11, “Who Owns the Democrats?”

The Republican party is not a party of conservative ideology.
It is a party of conservative clients. Whenever possible, the
ideology will be invoked as justification for taking care of the
clients’ needs. When the two are in conflict, the conservative
principles are discarded and the clients are served.

Chapter 12, “Rancid Populism”

To understand the Republican party (or the Democratic party, for
that matter), it is most efficient to look directly at the
clients — or as political scientist Thomas Ferguson would
call them, the “major investors.” On that level, the
ideological contradictions are unimportant. Political parties
do function as mediating institutions, only not for voters.